During the last few years, Financial Service Industry has seen radical changes with technology as an enabler.
In such changing times, it becomes critical for IFAs to think beyond mere transaction processing as a means of creating value addition for their clients.
To remain relevant and ahead of time, Prudent has recently launched a portal www.fundzbazar.com for its IFAs. It’s a platform which offers a facility to invest paperless in true sense. It’s a step towards moving from Investing to e-nvesting.
Shirish Patel, CEO, Prudent Corporate Advisory says that around 6,800 clients of his sub-brokers have already joined the platform within a month of its launch. According to Shirish, one of the interesting things about this new platform is that it allows his sub-brokers to acquire clients online. “We have given a unique link to each of our sub-brokers which they can use to acquire clients online. For instance, they can send a mailer to their database with a provided link. Once the investor clicks and invests through this link, the sub-brokers ARN/EUIN code will be automatically captured in our system. Similarly, they can use this link on social media sites. This ensures that they will get the commissions for all the investments coming through these clicks from investors,” says Shirish.
The platform provides login access to both distributors and their clients. Distributors can initiate transactions on behalf of their clients, which needs to be approved by investors.
Unique features offered by FundzBazar to IFAs
- Automatic Mapping of Existing Clients - If any existing client of IFA comes for registration on portal, it will be mapped automatically to that partners based on his PAN No. in Prudent database
- Partner Initiated Transaction Facility – It’s a facility where partner can initiate any transaction for his client. Client will receive mail for transaction initiated by his partner which a client can either accept or reject
- Partner Code Embedded for Digital Marketing - Partner Code embedded customized marketing material for various digital marketing including email, social media etc.
- Partner Co-Branding - Various material for co-branding which can be used for What’s App, email marketing
Investors can also invest on their own. All they need to do is to sign up by filling in their details and can start investment through net banking, Mandate and RTGS. For Mandate, investor has to provide duly signed NACH mandate.
FundzBazar is a simple to operate online investment platform, which provides many extraordinary features. Apart from investing and redeeming, it also provides features like Step-up SIP, Trigger Facility, WRAP Portfolios, Goal Planner, Goal based investing etc. Most important part is that Prudent Partner can execute transaction for any of the above mentioned features for his/her clients.
Shirish says that the platform aims to help sub-brokers cut down paperwork and manage their tasks more effectively. He adds that the portal allows the company’s partners to make client goals, generate reports, initiate transactions, analyze funds and do much more.
He also says “In Last few weeks many IFAs have approached us to join prudent Platform after knowing about Fundzbazar”. As of now, the portal only allows investments in mutual funds and fixed deposits and we will expand the product suite going forward.
According to fundzbazar website, it will not charge any transaction fee from investors. However, investors will have to cough up a fee to use its premium advisory services like Financial Planning.
Started in 2000, Prudent manages assets under advisory of Rs. 6,635 crore in mutual funds, claims its website. It has a force of over 7,000 sub-brokers.
Apart from mutual funds, Prudent deals in direct equities, derivatives, life & general insurance, commodities and real estate.
